The breakthrough laser machining intelligence as saver of jobs and competitiveness for Europe's manufacturing business

Project Information

SMAART

Grant agreement ID: 830296

DOI

10.3030/830296

Project closed

EC signature date 15 November 2018

Start date 1 December 2018

End date 31 March 2021

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 3 185 825,00

EU contribution

€ 2 230 077,50

Coordinated by

GFH GMBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SMAART (The breakthrough laser machining intelligence as saver of jobs and competitiveness for Europe's manufacturing business)

Reporting period: 2019-12-01 to 2021-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

EUR 9.01 trillion – this is the shockingly high amount of added value in manufacturing, which drained off from Europe to other world regions (particularly to regions with low production factor costs like Asia) in the last years. The reason for this can be mainly seen in cost differences of production factors.
To retrieve added value to Europe, particularly manufacturing and machining processes have to be improved to greater efficiency. Driven by the vision of Smart Factories of the Future and Industry 4.0 the European Commission therefore starts a lot of initiatives, like the Digital Single Market in 2016. The EC expects that digitisation of products and services can add more than EUR 110 billion of annual revenue in Europe in the next five years.

A technology predestined for making machining more efficient and for implementing Industry 4.0 in manufacturing is laser technology as processing is contactless, flexible and programmable. Especially the next level of laser machining based on ultrashort laser pulses is relevant, resulting in high precision never existed before. Up to now, existing laser machining systems are fixed to one incorporated laser and therefore limited in the parameter range and applications. This results in the need of having many different laser systems for different applications and in elaborate retooling and alignment times.

For the broad introduction of advanced laser machining in Europe’s manufacturing industry, neoLASE and GFH during this project integrated the prototype of a unique laser amplifier technology in a modular, self-adjusting and self-intelligent laser machining system to reach the next level of manufacturing. This system incorporates versatile seed lasers and optics, all combinable by the amplifier technology, and therefore has the functionalities of a variety of laser systems in only one machine.

This meets actual needs for the economic production of highly specialised and customised products like medical micro components in a unique approach covering all micro machining processes necessary.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Since the beginning of the project, both partners closely collaborated on the modularisation of laser machining components, on the development of interfaces and on the integration of the single components into a complete, market ready system. Demonstrators could be successfully realised and presented at different fairs and conferences and reference systems were sold to pilot customers. Internal processes, infrastructure and resources were successfully up-scaled. Project achievements have been released and disseminated via different channels, via press releases, via the partners' newsletters, and on social media. Moreover, publications have been successfully published in peer-reviewed journals. At the end of the project the laser machining system is ready for a broad range of industrial applications.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

At the end of the project, a market-ready, fully automated and highly flexible laser machining system based on ultrashort laser pulses was realised and sales were initiated. This sma(a)rt laser machining system beats the state of the art concerning accuracy, small footprint, automated retooling, process and production times of products, productive machining time, availability, throughput and costs. Moreover, the laser machining system is useable also for non-experts, strengthening the competitiveness of manufacturing companies in drilling, cutting, structuring, and ablating metal, ceramic, glass and polymers.

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